Shaobuliao as Entry in The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary: Criteria for Inclusion and Sense Selection

摘要

Out of innumerable expressions containing buliao, The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (CCD) includes only 4 as entries, i.e., shaobuliao, duanbuliao, mianbuliao, and dabuliao. This paper, through a scrutiny of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic variability of shaobuliao and a comparison with analogous entries in CCD, demonstrates that it is inappropriate for CCD to have selected shaobuliao in the sense of 'cannot do without' as an entry. Through an analysis of its various usages, the paper proposes that only shaobuliao as used before quantity expressions in non-comparative sentences is lexicalized into an independent lexical item and should therefore be included in CCD as an entry.